Publisher DTP Crew

This is one of many short video segments which will be added to the Digital Tipping Point (DTP) archive.

This series of interview segments features Bob Kerr, a highly paid computer systems administrator for Universal Studios in California, who quit his job to return to his native Scotland to give out Free Open Source Software CDs in schools and nearly all of the Scottish libraries. In the first two tapes in Bob's interviews (tapes 042 and 043), Bob explains that he undertook this work because he was concerned about preserving his native Gaelic language and culture. Proprietary vendors, such as Microsoft, could not be counted on to provide applications that would display Gaelic characters; and documents created in those proprietary formats could be lost forever if a vendor such as Microsoft decided that it did not make business sense to support a small language like Gaelic.

By contrast, Free Open Source Software could be used by the Scottish government and civil societies to assure that Gaelic language documents could be accessed in perpetuity, due to the fact that no one vendor could control Free Open Source Software programs.

Bob says that language is the bearer of culture. Language tells stories, and stories are the memories of who a people are, and what values are dear to them. Using Free Open Source Software could thus help preserve a minority language and culture like Gaelic that was being eroded by its contact with a more dominant language, like English.

By giving Free Open Source Software CDs to libraries, Bob was able to effectively create a CD distribution system that covered 80% of Scotland's 5 million people. He then had plans to expand his giveaway program to all of the UK's libraries, effectively making Free Open Source Software available to 56 million people for a very small investment.

Segment 001 of Tape 043 has a very funny story in which Bob tells in his own wry Scottish way how a treasurer of a local Pidgeon racing club realized that he, the treasurer, could use OpenOffice.org to place images of pidgeons on the newsletters that he was creating for his pidgeon racing club. Bob's imitation of that treasurer's classically Scottish reserved excitment is priceless and a must-see segment.

A few other interesting stories: Bob tells how his library distribution effort would permit people on the outlying British Isles to receive software that they would not be able to download over the Internet, as there was no Internet service to those Isles. Bob talks about his satisfaction in seeing that he was enabling social groups, such as the Pidgeon racing society, to strengthen their social ties by improving their newsletters; and he talks about his plans to get CDs into the hands of 750 high school students. Bob points out that Microsoft at that time did not have a large presence as an employer in Scotland, yet it sold millions of dollars worth of software to the Scotts, which to Bob represented an negative balance of trade that was not in Scotland's best interest.

If you like this segment, please consider typing up a summary for it and emailing that summary to Christian Einfeldt at einfeld@gmail.com. Your work will be credited and posted on this page.

The DTP will be many, many films created by the global open source video community about how open source is changing their lives. We, the DTP crew, are submitting this footage for anyone to rip, mix, and burn under the Creative Commons Attribute - ShareAlike license. We welcome edits, transcriptions, graphics, music, and animation contributions to the film. Please send a link for any contributions to Christian Einfeldt at einfeldt at digitaltippingpoint.com.

Or, if you would like to contribute by directly transcribing this particular video segment, you can do so by going here:

http://digitaltippingpoint.com/wiki/index.php/Tape_043

and typing the audio as you hear it into the wiki. Please be sure to add the transcription for this segment under: Segment 001, Bob Kerr
You can find other ways to contribute by going to our wiki front page here:

http://digitaltippingpoint.com/wiki/index.php/Main_Page

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Contact Information Christian Einfeldt, einfeldt at g mail dot com